Mark Mothersbaugh wears many hats: He’s a prolific composer for movie and TV, together with the animated Nickelodeon juggernaut “Rugrats”; he’s scored 4 Wes Anderson movies and Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarock” and is presently working with Pixar. Toddlers who spot the coolly bespectacled, gray-haired septuagenarian at an airport level and gurgle, “Yo Gabba Gabba!” due to Mothersbaugh’s portray phase referred to as “Mark’s Magic Pictures” on the wildly fashionable children present.
However not one of the hats worn by the prolific creator are as iconic — to a sure phase of the music-loving public — because the bespoke pink plastic “energy dome” toppers donned by Devo. Or, in laymen’s phrases, the “upside-down flowerpots” first worn in 1980 by the lineup Mothersbaugh co-created at Kent State College within the early Seventies. Devo not too long ago carried out on “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” and prolonged its farewell tour that started in 2023.
On a current sunny weekday, the Akron, Ohio, native is readying his debut solo exhibition of work and screenprints — “Why Are We Here? No. 01” — to open Friday in his personal MutMuz Gallery. He’s owned the area, on the hipster-meets-dusty-old-school Chung King Highway in Chinatown, for fairly a couple of years, and hung art work on the partitions. However he has by no means opened it to the general public till now.
Mothersbaugh is inviting the general public inside MutMuz Gallery for the primary time.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
Why not open it as much as others sooner? Alongside along with his generally mixed-media creations, the busy multitalent appears to have combined feelings about promoting his art work. Not that he’s received a dearth of it; he’s been creating practically a “postcard” a day for 30 years, and now has 1000’s of fastidiously curated items in archival sleeved books. Most playing cards embody cryptic, generally multilingual bon mots written along with his beloved Sumi-e brush pens. An instance: “It was a one act play … that lasted 75 years.”
The multi-instrumentalist even penned early lyrics to the Devo tune “Uncontrollable Urge” on a card, however mailed it to an acquaintance he was buying and selling postcard artwork with, then discovered he’d forgotten the verse by the following band rehearsal.
“After that, I stopped mailing the cards — I started keeping them. I thought I’d never be showing them to anybody.” He guesses there have to be about 70,000 items. He additionally has warehouse storage to accommodate his works on paper … and extra.
The hoarding tendencies of the self-proclaimed nerd have resulted in 165 visible and audio artwork exhibitions, together with his touring retrospective, “Myopia.”
With MutMuz, he’s going public in a brand new method. He appears across the high-ceilinged, cement-floored gallery, the highest row hung with bigger work on canvas, the decrease with screenprints. “Everything that’s in here, at some point in time, I was very happy to have hanging in my room. And I loved it.”
Mothersbaugh eyes his work one week earlier than his gallery opening.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
Mothersbaugh initially envisioned being “very active” with the gallery area — “then I got hit by COVID, and it really changed everything,” he says. Egged on by his household, who urged him to “get the gallery up and going,” he’s lastly opening its doorways. Though fallout from the virus continues — Mothersbaugh has lengthy COVID — he has saved composing (Netflix’s “The Residence” and “A Minecraft Movie” are two current initiatives), touring and making art work. Many of the work in “Why Are We Here? No. 01” have been created throughout the pandemic.
All of the present’s 10 oil work and the ten limited-edition screenprints are unframed; the one frames within the room are Mothersbaugh’s personal distinct silver glasses, correcting his myopia. That stated, a lot of his work have hand-drawn sentences across the borders that body and contextualize the work. However not all of them. But.
Mothersbaugh’s artwork, like Devo’s music, is commonly endearingly odd.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
It’s one week earlier than opening, and not one of the artwork is but priced or titled. It additionally appears Mothersbaugh’s coronary heart would possibly break if somebody walked away with a purchase order. He’s referred to as himself a “hoarder,” and that appears to incorporate his personal voluminous amount of labor.
Deitch advised Mothersbaugh his shopper’s costs needed to start at $50,000. Mothersbaugh, who carries round art-making supplies like pens and pre-prepped card inventory in a Ziploc bag, preferred Deitch, however he declined. Mothersbaugh’s artwork, like Devo’s music, is commonly frenetic, humorous, mental and endearingly odd.
Mothersbaugh’s self-portrait, full with clown nostril, might be on show on the MutMuz gallery opening.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
As each a collector and a creator of ephemera, Mothersbaugh’s tastes are darkly poignant. One of many items in “Why Are We Here?” was knowledgeable by a childhood incident. Gazing on the work, the artist remembers, “I remember screaming for help as I was being chased by a duck when I was 4 years old. And my family sat there. I stepped on a basement window and crashed through it.” That visible state of affairs could quickly hold in somebody’s front room.
“If somebody says they want to buy [a painting], I’ll say, ‘Do want me to still finish the border?’ Some, I’ve looked at them, and I saw that I want to put more things on the front too,” he continues, wanting particularly at one of many sparer items close to the entrance of the gallery. “I could see going over to somebody’s house and it’s hanging on the wall, and I could add something over that plane that’s coming down, or I could write something over the front of the car.”
Mothersbaugh at all times knew he’d be in a band, however he went to Kent State to review artwork, particularly drawn to printmaking and calligraphy. Conversant on seemingly each cultural and sociopolitical subject beneath the solar, he sees himself and his work within the class of “social scientist. I’m just documenting things I see. I do it in cartoons. I think I use a lot of cartoon imagery just because it makes me less angry with people if I can turn them into a cartoon, even myself, like down there,” he says, pointing to a rough-hewn self-portrait emboldened by a giant clown nostril and jutting-out ears. Befitting the postcard measurement is a duo of 10-cent Cuban stamps.
The Devo co-founder considers himself a social scientist and ceaselessly makes use of cartoon imagery in his art work.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
His inspiration seems extra “childhood ducks” or novelty retailer rejects than, say, Rene Magritte or Lucian Freud. And all his works in oil stem from his unique postcard-sized art work. A newer topical muse: Jack White. He hasn’t advised the musician that the piece, that includes a vintage-looking masked man in a go well with and the phrases “Donc c’est tout. Nashville,” got here after the 2 met. Of the French textual content, Mothersbaugh bemoans the truth that he’s not multilingual. As a substitute, “What I do is, sometimes I want to say something, so I Google it and if I like the way it looks in another language, I’ll put it up in another language.”
Mothersbaugh’s art work is created inside its personal work of architectural infamy, the headquarters of Mutato Muzika, the long-lasting spherical, neon inexperienced constructing on the Sundown Strip in West Hollywood that homes his manufacturing studio. The Chinatown gallery title derives from that studio moniker, itself a portmanteau of “Mutant” and “Potato.”
“Some of this stuff gets used in things,” he says, gesturing towards album artwork and strolling across the light-filled room, incense wafting from the Chinese language Consolidated Benevolent Assn. throughout the pedestrian-only method. “Most of it, though, I just do it for myself. It’s like things I hear, things that wake me up in the middle of the night, stuff like that. I just add little disparate pieces.” The top outcome can evoke a palimpsest really feel.
The prolific artist studied at Kent State College, notably drawn to printmaking and calligraphy.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Occasions)
Mothersbaugh is grateful that his “day job” of music funds his assortment — and art-creation habits.
As such, his gallery objectives seem modest: “To be honest, the business of an art gallery is less interesting than just putting shows up and then talking to people and letting people see things that they could have a reaction to.”
Along with his many hats, Mothersbaugh is a consummate juggler, although he’s unsure the way it all traces up in his head. “I don’t know what my head is. I watch my brothers and sisters, and I think they’re all smarter than me. They’ll make better decisions than me; and then some make worse decisions, sometimes,” he says. “But, still, I think I feel like most people around me are more exceptional. I just happen to be obsessive about putting things together.”
Why Are We Right here? No. 01
The place: MutMuz Gallery, 971 Chung King Highway, Chinatown
When: 7 to 11 p.m., April 11
Internet: MarkMothersbaugh.com
